We would like to invite you to a special Jain Study Day on Saturday the 24^th of March at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, where we shall share our inspiring story with you. Tickets for this very special event can be booked through the V&A website.

Drop-in Design

Make your own manuscript

10.30–17.00, Lunchroom 1, Sackler Centre

Pick up a design challenge, hunt for ideas in the galleries, and then create your own fantastic manuscript using eco-friendly paper and lentils. 

Jain Storytelling

11.00, 13.00 & 15.00

South Asia Gallery

Join storyteller Seema Anand for an interactive tale about animals!

Jain Family Tours

12.00, 14.00 and 16.00

South Asia Gallery

The V&A is home to a world renowned collection of Jain manuscripts and objects. Join a free guided tour especially for families by Jainpedia volunteers.

This day of free events is presented by the V&A in partnership with Jainpedia and supported by the Jain Art Fund

Find out more at http://www.vam.ac.uk/families

Nick Barnard, curator of the Jainpedia display  at the V&A began the day with a presentation on Jain manuscript iconography, style and behind the scenes stories of Jain manuscripts not on display at the museum.

Thereafter, Mike Wheeler, the senior paper conservator explained the analysis of pigments in manuscripts and identifying any damage to them. The visitors were most fascinated when he showed this to them practically allowing them to see the raw mineral pigments.

The afternoon was commented to be the highlight of the day, with 15 visitors going to the Shikharbandhi Temple in Potters Bar. Arshna Sanghrajka gave an inspirational tour of the temple and its grounds, including a clear account of Jain principles and worship.  The beauty of the temple was appreciated immensely.

 A positively received event in general; ‘I enjoyed the visit to the Potters Bar temple and access to manuscripts in Storage’ (Inside Outing event visitor)

DATE: Thursday 16 June 2011
TIME:  10.00am to 5.30pm
MEETING PLACE: Hochhauser Auditorium in the Sackler Centre, Victoria and Albert Museum

Enjoy a behind-the-scenes day in two parts

In the morning you’ll take a closer look at some of the rare Jain manuscripts held in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. You will learn how conservation has enabled their digitisation and public display.

The Śvetāmbara temple at Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, the first Shikharbandhi Jain temple to be built in Europe. Image taken from the Learn Jainism website, used by courtesy of OAUK.

In the afternoon you will begin the second part of the event. You will be taken to visit the first Jain Śvetāmbara temple in Europe, in Potters Bar, not far from London. Completed in August 2005, this spectacular building uses 1300 tonnes of pink sandstone and 500 tonnes of Indian marble. The individual pieces were carved in India and then assembled on site by Indian craftsmen.

Visitors will be treated to a personal tour of the temple and its extensive grounds, and then to tea.

Organised in collaboration with the Institute of Jainology and supported by the V&A Jain Art Fund, this event is available at the special rate of £30 per person.

To book and pay for your place online, please click on the button at: http://www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event/1108/

You have just less than a week to book so you’ll need to hurry!

Nick’s specialist Curator Talk will be held in the Victoria and Albert Museum‘s Hochhauser Auditorium to accompany the launch of JAINpedia – an ambitious project digitising Jain manuscripts in the UK.

The talk will explore finely illustrated Jain manuscript pages on display in the Nehru Gallery of Indian art at the V&A till December 2012.  Dating from the 15th to 19th centuries, these beautiful manuscripts were preserved in temple libraries in India before arriving at the V&A. The V&A’s collection includes examples in a range of styles, some never displayed before.

When?

The talk starts at 1.15pm and finishes at 2pm on Wednesday 3 November 2010.

Where?

The Hochhauser Auditorium at the V&A in South Kensington, London.

Who?

Nick Barnard, Curator of South Asian art in the Asian Department

How much?

It’s free and you can just go along without booking.

More information

You can find out more about the talk and other lunch-time events at the museum from the V&A website.

You can listen to Nick at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0084t6r

The exhibition opened last month in the Nehru Gallery and is the first in a series of exhibitions at museums and galleries round the country.

We are very happy that the exhibition will feature 20 beautiful artefacts of Jain art, including folios from manuscripts, manuscript covers and large paintings. The themes of the exhibition will be the Jain universe, the Jinas and their disciples and monastic rules and morals.

The free exhibition will be open until the end of 2012 and there will be a programme of events running alongside. Look at Rajiv’s post on 5th January for some more information about these. Doubtless, he’ll be reminding you of these events and activities as they approach.

Curator’s talk

Rules of conduct for monks (detail), Uttarādhyayanasūtra, opaque watercolour on paper, Gujarat, India, about 1450. © V&A Images / Victoria and Albert Museum, London

One of the opening events will be a talk by Nick Barnard, Curator of South Asian art in the Asian Department. The talk takes place on Thursday 20th May at 1pm. Lasting under an hour, it’s free and will involve walking round the gallery looking at some of the Jain artefacts on display.

Jainpedia preview

Visitors to the exhibition will also have the chance to explore a special edition of the Jainpedia website, created specifically to support the items they will see in the gallery.

Though it won’t be a full version of the website, it will demonstrate some of the functionality and give a good idea of our approach to showcasing and contextualising these wonderful pieces of art and religion. You can think of it as a kind of preview of the website proper, though the full Jainpedia will have many more bells and whistles along with substantially more material.

The V&A and Jain art

One of the premier museums in the world, the V&A is world famous for the depth and breadth of its collections, its curatorial expertise and its innovative, fascinating exhibitions. They have a particularly rich Asian section, with South Asian artefacts displayed chiefly in the Nehru Gallery and surrounding rooms. The Jain collection is one of the most exquisite and important in the UK, with some significant items on long-term display.

Some of you may remember the exhibition The Peaceful Liberators – Jain Art from India, which opened at the V&A in 1995. This was a pioneering international exhibition of Jain art. The V&A website boasts a very good section on Jainism, which uses videos and personal testimonies, as well as text and interactive features.

The Jainpedia team is extremely pleased that the V&A has agreed to put on this exhibition to complement the Jainpedia website and we hope to see lots of you at the exhibition over the next eighteen months or so.

This is going to be one of the biggest Jain projects ever to happen in the UK and it follows on from the Jain Art from India – The Peaceful Liberators exhibition at the V&A in 1995, which many people in the Jain community still remember.

Alongside the development of the website, there is going to be a three-year programme of outreach work with the community.

This will include major exhibitions at the partner / holding institutes. In 2010 there will be a year-long exhibition at the V&A, followed by an exhibition at the British Library from May to June 2011 and then one at the Bodleian Library in Oxford in 2012. To complement the major exhibitions there will be smaller exhibitions travelling around the country to venues such as art centres and multi-faith centres, along with associated workshops and activities.

There will be an extensive national education programme – we will be delivering INSET (In-School Education and Training) sessions to teachers in line with guidelines for the National Curriculum with the possibility of giving additional workshops in school sessions. The Institute of Jainology has already been working for some time towards getting Jainism taught in schools through the ‘Discover Jainism’ books and providing teachers’ notes in line with QCA notes for religious education for Key Stages 1, 2 and 3.

How can you get involved?

In total, we are hoping to reach over 400,000 people nationwide over the next two to three years. To deliver the various activities planned over the next few years we need an active, committed team of volunteers with a variety of skills such as:

• workshop leaders and assistants to deliver sessions in schools and museums
• trainers of teachers at Key Stage 3 level (ages 11 to 14)
• advocates and ambassadors who will go out into the community and spread the word about Jainism and JAINpedia
• researchers to source and evaluate web content, e.g. articles, essays, photos, videos, to populate the website
• writing for the magazine Jain Spirit, which we are hoping to relaunch as part of the website development.

We need a minimum commitment of six months and in return for this you will receive:

• training from experts
• full support and expenses
• development of your skills base
• the feeling of being part of a great team
• the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of a unique national project.

Our parents and grandparents ensured that we have grown up knowing about Jainism and benefiting from its values and teachings. We need to make sure that our children also benefit from this beautiful religion.

To find out more and/or to register your interest in volunteering contact usha.shah@jainpedia.org

The IoJ spent some 12 years in cataloguing the collection of Jain manuscripts in the British Library – a testament to the dedication of the scholars who worked on this task. The collection has many beautifully illustrated folios on paper, cloth and palm leaf and covers a diverse range of subjects related to Jain beliefs, tradition and practices. This makes it not only of importance to the Jain community, but also because it is a part of Britain’s imperial history and a constituent of modern, multicultural Britishness.

Producing the catalogue was a milestone in IoJ’s history, and its launch by Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace was the icing on the cake. Although the catalogue brought much wider awareness of the collection, especially its newer acquisitions, it had already become apparent that the collection was not being fully utilised except by a few scholars and learned monks and nuns.

The challenge was a simple one: how do we make this collection accessible to a wide and diverse audience? This question of access was also a multi-faceted one – physical contact with these manuscripts can be difficult as some are rare, many centuries old and fragile; even if one could get to them, many are in languages that have not been spoken for a millennia and more; and, if one could perchance read the script, the contents are themselves difficult without an understanding of Jain philosophy, history and culture!

Out of this challenge came the seed of Jainpedia: a rich online resource that would have at its heart a digitised collection of some 5,000 folios from the Jain collections at the British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Bodleian Library and the Wellcome Trust Collection. The digitised images would be contextualised with commentaries from modern scholars, audio and video material and translations of the original texts. Alongside this there would be material for schools and young people, as well as somewhere for the Jain community to record their views and practices in the 21st century.

This resource would then be launched in the community through major exhibitions at the V&A and the British Library, activities in schools and events at other regional religious and heritage centres and at Jain temples.

I am excited by both the scale and opportunity that Jainpedia brings. I am grateful to the stakeholders, funders and the Jainpedia team for making this project a reality and I eagerly look forward to its launch in the coming months.

Mehool Sanghrajka
Project Director – Jainpedia
Director, Institute of Jainology